The best part of the latter story: This isn’t the Wunderlichs first run-in with German officials. In 2012, state officials took legal custody of their children over the same issue. While the family later left the country in search of the freedom to educate their children at home, a failure to find work drove them back to Germany. HSLDA charges that the kids’ passports were then taken by the government in an effort to ensure that the family doesn’t travel for the same purposes again.

So seriously, Mark Shea, give up this meme that the Germans don’t like the police state. They like it just fine, just so long as the “right people” are in charge.

G.

“Yes, why are those Germans *so* touchy about this. Easy, because it’s the US doing it.”

I think you are missing the point. And very much so.

You know, there is that thing called history. That thing from whence we know that people claiming to be a “master race” aren’t our friend. That history of which about 70% of German history lessons are composed.

There are lots of Germans who don’t care about spying at all, because it doesn’t hurt them right now. Normal people behaviour. People are like this.

There are also lots of Germans who don’t like to be spied from, regardless of who is doing the spying.

There may be some who object more to US-spies than to German ones, since, you know, there IS a difference between our own government doing this, or the wacky US-ians, who cannot really be regarded to be civilised with all their gun-crazyness and the like.

vox borealis

My point is that Mark Shea repeatedly posts on this theme, that the Germans are particularly suspicious of the all powerful police state because of their particular history with the Fascists and the Stasi. And of course, in so doing, he gets to make the connection between the growing US police state and wicked regimes like Nazi Germany and the GDR.

But he’s flat wrong that Germans are particularly sensitive to and/or fearful of the police state. They are not. In fact, based on my experience living Germany, I would suggest Germans are by and large *more* comfortable with the police state. This has to do with deep-rooted cultural tendencies, namely that Germans embrace a powerful state and are willing to sacrifice personal and family independence for the good of the secular community to a degree higher than in, say, the US. Thus, Germans often misidentify the core problem. When they do express fear of the police state, it’s only when the *wrong* people are in charge of it, like the Nazi’s or the Communists or the Americans. But if it’s the *right* people, like good, wise an tolerant moderate secular German bureaucrats, they tend to be all for it.

Thus, Germans tend, in my experience, to address the symptoms of the police state rather than its root cause.

In any case, as I stated, my main point is that Shea continues to miss the boat on this. (Though I do not object to his association of the growing American police state with fascist and communist Germany…that is the trajectory that *all* police states take. If only the Germans would recognize this, too.)

SteveP

Given the tenor of the previous post we can say that the German citizens do not really love USA citizens because they are not paying for surveillance? Mark, are you okay?

Gleichschaltung

I suppose because Germans by and large still remember the word gleichschaltung from their recent past and it’s deadly effects.